Healthy & delicious The wild carrot scores with its ingredients

The wild carrot in the kitchen: awaken taste buds
While the carrot often lands on the plate in German cuisine, its original form is hardly known. The wild carrot with its spicy aroma can provide new taste sensations. The young leaves and stems taste in salad, in vegetable pans and finely chopped in soups and sauces. The thin, whitish root has a tart-sweet taste and contains valuable ingredients such as provitamin A, B vitamins, calcium, folic acid and selenium.

Wild carrot for health and taste.

For a vegetable garnish, it is cut into sticks, briefly stewed in broth and refined with a little olive oil and a hint of chili. Also try the soft flowers - as an edible decoration for salads or fried in pancake batter. The dried seeds have an aniseed aroma that gives spicy and sweet foods a pleasant spice. Essential oils stimulate digestion.

The wild carrot (Daucus carota) is a tall plant that quickly catches the eye on a walk. It belongs to the Umbelliferae family and has several pinnate leaves. Only in the second year, the flowering develops. Collect only with the necessary species knowledge. Because the wild carrot must not be confused with poisonous plants such as dog parsley or spotted hemlock. An important distinguishing feature is the smell, because the wild carrot exudes a pleasantly spicy to carrot-like fragrance. In the middle of the white umbellate flowers usually sits a blackish to dark red pseudobulb to simulate insect visit and thereby increase the attractiveness for pollinators. Another special feature: After pollination, the flower curves to the center, so that the fruit resembles a bird's nest.

The wild carrot can be found on dry meadows, in quarries, on roadsides and embankments. The herb is harvested during flowering from May to September, while the root tastes best in early spring or autumn. After flowering, it becomes woody. Heike Kreutz, bzfe